Next U.N. chief pledges swift action on Darfur
Nov 7, 2006 (SEOUL) — The U.N. secretary-general elect, South Korea’s Ban Ki-Moon, said on Tuesday he aimed to meet Sudanese President Omar Hassan al-Bashir as soon as possible to break the deadlock over U.N. peacekeepers going to Darfur.
Ban, who takes office on Jan. 1, said the international community and the United Nations in particular needed to halt the violence in Sudan’s western Darfur region “before it’s too late”.
An estimated 200,000 people have been killed in Darfur since 2003 in what the U.S. government has dubbed genocide. More than 2.5 million people have been displaced by the fighting between rebels, the Sudanese government and its allied Arab militias.
The U.N. Security Council passed a resolution in August to send 22,000 peacekeepers to Darfur. Sudan says that would be like a return to colonisation by Western powers.
“I’m going to meet Sudanese leaders and other African leaders to help resolve this Darfur crisis before it’s too late,” Ban told Reuters in an interview in Seoul.
Asked if he planned to meet Bashir, Ban replied: “I hope I’ll be able to meet him as soon as possible; but I’ll try to meet the foreign minister first.”
Ban, South Korea’s minister for foreign affairs and trade, also pledged to concentrate on resolving the situation in Somalia, where tensions continue between Islamists controlling Mogadishu and the Western-backed interim government in Baidoa.
“Somalia’s people should also be able to enjoy political and social stability,” he told Reuters.
Ban had sought earlier on Tuesday to allay concerns that Africa would slide from the United Nations agenda under his tenure. Two people from the continent, Boutros Boutros-Ghali and Kofi Annan, have run the world body since 1992.
“I will literally pour down my attention and passion towards Africa to resolve the problems inherent in the continent,” he told four African presidents at a dinner in Seoul to mark the first Korea-Africa Forum. “The African continent still faces a multitude of challenges in the 21st century.”
THANKED AFRICA
Asked whether his attention might be more occupied by the nuclear testing crisis in North Korea, Ban said the U.N. chief’s role was to address the challenges facing the whole of the international community, not just one region.
“As I come from Korea, that issue is one that I will deal with,” he told Reuters. “But … as secretary-general, my job and priority will be on development as much as on North Korea’s nuclear issues.”
Ban, who has quietly resisted U.S. pressure for the secretary-general to adopt a less political role, had earlier thanked African states for supporting his candidacy for the job.
He acknowledged, however, that the United Nations had mishandled crises in Africa, such as the 1994 Rwandan genocide in which more than 800,000 people, mainly from the minority Tutsi ethnic group, were killed in just over three months.
The Korean diplomat, known for his soft-spoken approach, said he was shocked by a visit to the Rwanda Genocide Memorial in May, one of his eight visits to Africa this year.
“That experience will have a big implication on my future duties as the next secretary-general,” Ban told the gathering, attended by the presidents of Ghana, Congo Republic, Benin and Tanzania.
“In hindsight, my humble thought was that had the U.N. intervened in the Rwandan genocide at an earlier stage, such an unfortunate disaster would have been prevented,” he said.
(Reuters)